Sunday, August 9, 2015

I thought I'd write a bit about an aspect
of everyday life that I've been able to appreciate more since our move
to Thailand. Yesterday Alisha was commenting on the fact that our
lives here don't have the same rhythm they had in the US with me going
into work every day from 9:00 to dinner time. The variety in our
schedule certainly takes some getting used to. But we've snatched some
flexibility out of the chaos in the way that we take turns
facilitating schooling throughout the week.

I've really appreciated the freedom to just follow the kids' interests
and see where it takes us for the day. I am a strong believer that
meaningful learning is something a student can only do on their
own. To me teaching at its best is not a matter of imparting facts or
opinions, but rather just asking the right questions and providing the
spark that ignites curiosity, and the willingness to follow that
curiosity even if it leads somewhere unexpected.

This is best exemplified in how we do math. I do my best to try to
pull topics from whatever "materials of life" we have at hand. For
instance, one morning a breakfast of waffles offered a perfect
opportunity to talk about square numbers. This
was before we had introduced them to the concept of multiplication,
but with 4x4 waffles it was easy enough to count the squares one by
one, then eat a layer from off the edge, then count the 3x3 waffle
that remained, all the way down to a single square. Later when we did
start to teach multiplication, they were able to relate it to what we
did with the waffles.

With math specifically, it's important to understand that while some
topics do build on earlier ones, other topics can be approached in any
order you please. Some topics are often thought of as advanced simply
because they are typically taught later in school, but they are not
beyond the abilities of younger kids.

For instance, one day after studying some Thai, Z asked what language
robots used. Since we had already done
some electronics projects,
I was able to explain that robots and other machines use the same
electrical signals he's already seen, but they had a way to "think
about" numbers using on and off as two "digits". We went on to
talk about how we represent
numbers using ten digits and what you would have to do if you only had
two, which turned into teaching them binary representation of
numbers. Eventually we got to how to
represent letters and writing using numbers,
which tied into earlier exercises we did using
Caesar ciphers to
email grandparents.

Everyday life is full of numbers, and you can find opportunities to
explore them if you stay alert. But some days it can be nice to take a
break from the spontaneity, since it can be a bit draining to
maintain. The kids are always up for some videos as a change of
pace. My personal favorite is
Vi Hart's channel as
her enthusiasm for the material has proven
infectious. (Hexaflexagons
and Fibonacci in
particular are great starting points.) But we also throw some
Khan Academy and Right Start Math into the mix in order to keep
things more balanced and ensure we cover all the bases.

It's been striking to me how focused they can be when working through
exercises that have come up through pursuing their own questions
rather than just whatever happens to be next in the plan. In the case
of binary the kids took to the material naturally and just ate it
up. In other cases I've pulled up videos that covered a topic that
they didn't fully understand, but I believe it's still beneficial
every so often to expose them to something they're "not ready for" as
long as you don't set unrealistic expectations. For one, it can serve
as a preview to exciting things to come, but beyond that sometimes it
can show you that
your expectations were too low to begin with.